From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov
Transcript for: Agencies' Suspension and Debarment of Contractors
Audio interview by GAO staff with Bill Woods, Director, Acquisition and
Sourcing Management
Related GAO Work: GAO-11-739: Suspension and Debarment: Some Agency
Programs Need Greater Attention, and Governmentwide Oversight Could Be
Improved
Released on: October 6, 2011
[ Background Music ]
[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the Government Accountability Office. It's October 6,
2011. Last year, the federal government spent more then $535 billion on
contracted goods and services. Suspensions and debarments, which allow
agencies to exclude contractors for misconduct, can help ensure that
contracts go to responsible sources. A group led by Bill Woods, a
director in GAO's Acquisition and Sourcing Management team, recently
reviewed agencies' use of suspensions and debarments. GAO's Jeremy
Cluchey sat down with Bill to learn more.
[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] How do suspensions and debarments work?
[ Bill Woods: ] A suspension is a temporary exclusion of a party from
participating in government programs, be they contracts, grants, various
types of assistance. A debarment is for a fixed period of time, usually
no more than 3 years. The way the process works is each agency will have
a suspension and debarment official who will receive information from
various sources about contractors and other parties who might be
candidates for listing on the excluded parties list system. The
suspension and debarment official will review the facts and
circumstances and then make a determination about whether the
government's interest would be best protected by excluding those parties
from participating in contracts, grants, or other assistance from the
government.
[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And that exclusion often comes as a result of some
sort of misconduct, your report notes. Can you give some examples of the
sorts of misconduct that could lead a contractor to be suspended or
debarred by and agency?
[ Bill Woods: ] Sure. It really spans the gamut, sometimes a statute
will provide for an exclusion for various reasons like health care fraud
or tax evasion or something similar along those lines. Other types of
misconduct might be a serious failure to perform on a government
contract or fraud or something along those lines.
[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team looked at the use of this tool by 10
federal agencies, some of which used it frequently and others of which
barely used it at all. Can you talk about your findings?
[ Bill Woods: ] Sure. We wanted to get a mix of agencies, both large and
small, a mix of agencies that were frequent users of the suspension and
debarment process as well as agencies that appeared not to be using it
at all. And our purpose was to identify whether there were any
differences in practices among those agencies, and in fact we did find
some differences. We found that agencies that had dedicated staff
resources, policies and procedures, and a robust referral process ended
up with more use of the suspension and debarment process.
[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] You also looked at efforts to oversee and coordinate
the use of suspensions and debarments across the government. Can you
talk about what you found here?
[ Bill Woods: ] Certainly. There's an entity that was first created by
executive order called the Interagency Suspension and Debarment
Committee; that is the primary committee responsible for oversight and
coordination among other federal agencies. But we did find some problems
with that, how that committee is operating. The principle problem is
although it has statutory recognition it does not have any funding, it
does not have any staff. So it relies on the participating agencies,
primarily the Chair and the Vice Chair, to provide their own staff
resources. It also doesn't have any authority to compel other agencies
to cooperate in terms of providing data, and we pointed out that a
statutory report that was required from the Congress took over 2 years
to prepare and submit simply because the data was slow in getting
generated.
[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] That was an annual report, right?
[ Bill Woods: ] That was an annual report, and the first annual report
had to cover 2 years.
[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Finally, what recommendations is GAO making in this
report?
[ Bill Woods: ] We had a number of recommendations. First, for those
agencies that we found did not have good practices in the suspension and
debarment area, we recommended that they take a look at the three key
components that we identified in terms of staffing, in terms of policies
and procedures, and in terms of a robust referral process, and that they
adopt those practices. We also had recommendations for the Office of
Management and Budget to issue governmentwide guidance that would
identify those three factors and encourage all agencies to adopt those
three. And then finally we had recommendation again to the Office
Management and Budget that it provide additional support in terms of
guidance both to the Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee and
to other agencies to cooperate with that committee in getting its work
done.
[ Background Music ]
[ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO's website at GAO.gov and be sure
to tune in to the next edition of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from
the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.